


For a Friend

by orphan_account



Category: Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M, and maybe one line that might be considered even remotely angsty, followed by more fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7545517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon does a few things out of the ordinary, and Sock tries to keep up with a sudden break from the norm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For a Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just need some fluff, y'know?

“… What are you _doing?_ ”

The bus bumped over a pothole, and Jon cursed under his breath, erasing a wayward mark on his paper. Question 4 of 20 of that night’s algebra homework. A calculator was balancing on the side of the textbook-turned-makeshift desk, threatening to fall. Jon held the sharpened half of a pencil between his teeth and erased with an unsharpened back-half before switching. He was in a frenzy—a rabid, raging race, it seemed, for academia, which was perhaps the single least likely thing for Jonathan-freaking-Combs to be doing, if you were to ask Sock.

“… Jon?” Sock lowered his head onto the textbook, phasing through Jon’s hand and doing a half-decent job of obscuring his view. “What are you doing? Are you sick?”

“Yeah, sick of algebra.”

“Then why are you doing it on the _bus?_ ”

“It’ll give me more time to do whatever I want at home. Move your head.”

“Don’t you want to procrastinate? Put it off and forget about it?”

“Hey, you can’t be a bad student forever.”

Sock had been to Hell and back, and he had never been so flabbergasted. “Yes you can!”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“… Um… Okay then, Jon. You have… Fun… With that.” Sock scooted back into fake-sitting on the bus seat.

“I will. Thanks.”

The rest of the bus ride was filled with weird silence, muffled curses, and constant thought.

Sock took a closer look at Jon’s homework—well, what he could make of it. It all seemed to blend together into numbers and lines and randomly placed letters that must have arrived on accident and overstayed their welcome. He shook his head and spent the rest of the ride silent.

It was only when the bus was speeding away from them that Jon, with decisive finesse, landed the final strike upon the paper. He folded up his work into a haphazard rectangle and stuffed it and his supplies back into his bag. “Ha. Take that, algebra.”

“Do you think you did a good job?” said Sock.

“Nope. Wouldn’t count on it. C’mon.” It was then that Jonathan Combs, in all of his norm-defying glory that day, walked in the opposite direction from his house.

“… Okay, Jon, I was joking before—kind of—not really—but now I am _really_ concerned.”

Jon didn’t look back. “Hey, be concerned all you want. Are you coming?”

“Well, yeah!!” Sock flew over to Jon, meeting his pace once he was at his side, “I need to see what you’re planning! That is, if you’re planning something and not just going off to do something spontaneous or illegal—wait, are you going to do something illegal?” Sock’s voice rose with excitement.

“Nope.”

“Aaaaw…”

“Don’t get too excited, Sock.”

“I won’t!” He was. He was very excited. He wasn’t sure why, but he was. “I’m cool.”

The wilderness of suburbia was untamed for those who follow strict routines and paths, the endless, winding corridors sometimes falling back upon one another or coiling around each other, but Jon, despite having never gone this way in all the time Sock had haunted him, followed a set path as if it were second-nature.

“… Are you taking me someplace scary?”

“Oh, yeah. Terrifying.”

“Like a haunted house? Or somewhere a serial killer used to live?”

“Sock, I was being sarcastic.”

“… I knew that!”

“Sure you did.”

“… So, if it’s not scary, is it… Dangerous? Thrilling?”

“About as dangerous and thrilling as this neighborhood can get.”

“I don’t know… Some of your neighbors _are_ kinda creepy.”

“Says the literal demon.”

“I may be undead, but at least I don’t leave orange peelings all over my driveway or walk around in the middle of the night in a—“

“Let’s not revisit that one.”

“Fair enough.”

Sock slowly twirled and spun in the air around Jon, looking for landmarks or houses or something to give him a clue as to his destination—clues that he no longer needed when Jon stepped off the sidewalk and between the trees, into the woods.

Not too far into the woods, but just far enough for no one to every find it on accident, in a tiny clearing with a few wayward flowers, was a bench, its metal supports worn and rusted with time and its wooden surface smooth and splintered in the way that seemed implausible, as if some magic spell had kept it relatively pristine over the years. Jonathan plopped down onto it as easily as one would sit on a couch in one’s home.

“… This is what you came here for? A bench? You did your homework early so you could take me to a bench?”

“Hey, it’s a nice bench.” Jonathan unplugged his headphones from his phone, messed around with the screen, and let the music ring through the clearing—audible, but not disruptive, peaceful, but energetic. Sock sat down next to him and, unsure where to look or what to do, stared up at the sky and the branches pushed by the breeze.

“… Why did you take me here?”

“Does everything need a reason?”

“I mean—kinda. You’re the one who slept 16 hours in a row just to prove a point. I didn’t take you for the whimsical type.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “This isn’t _whimsy_. It’s just… I don’t know… Nice.”

“… I used to come here all the time,” he continued, “Usually alone, sometimes with a friend, just because I liked how the sound bounced around. Should’ve brought a guitar…”

“Wait,” Sock snickered, “You had friends?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“What were they like?”

Jon shrugged. “They were like friends. They did the things friends were supposed to do. You know?”

“… Not exactly.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Point is, I haven’t been here in a really long time.”

“So… Why did you bring me here?”

Jon inhaled, as if to begin to answer, then looked away from Sock, “I just missed the place; that’s all. You were going to follow me anyway.”

“Oh. Right.” He spoke somewhere between disbelief and suspicion.

Sock rested his hands on the bench on either side of him, turning his attention back to the sky. It took him a moment to notice Jon’s hand phased through his own, Jon still refusing to look at Sock. The music played on with an increased fervor—or, wait, no, it hadn’t changed tempo or pitch at all. Things just sounded different in that moment—more intense.

“… You can’t really _feel_ that, can you?” asked Sock.

“What?” Joh=n turned to look at Sock, and, as his mind registered the question, a hint of rose snuck into his pallid face. He looked away again. “… Kind of. It’s sort of… Tingly.”

Sock pondered that for a moment before sliding closer, his leg brushing, not quite phasing, against Jon’s. “… Your taste in music is weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“—But I like it.”

“… Thanks.”

As the music began to near its peak, Jon felt something not quite like numbness spread across his shoulder, a part of his neck, his jawline. A head of brunette hair and a dumb red hat appeared in his peripherals, relaxed against the grey of his sweatshirt.

“Thanks, Jon, for showing me your definitely-not-whimsical music-place.”

Jon let out a single, breathy laugh. “Yeah. No problem.” He hesitated as the musical climax reached its end and the final chorus rung through. “… Anything for a friend.”


End file.
